Irish pose next test for eurozone austerity plans

DUBLIN – When voters in Greece and France got the chance, they dealt a resounding “No!” to parties backing austerity measures. The Irish could be next to give the European Union’s austerity plans a black eye.

A May 31 referendum here asks the public to approve an EU treaty that aims to control nations’ annual deficits and longer-term debts. But critics say the treaty ignores the competing need to stimulate growth.

Additional Photos

A mother and child walk past a poster urging a "no" vote in Ireland's referendum on the EU fiscal treaty in Dublin on Sunday. The poster says in Gaelic: "Stand up for Ireland, vote no.'' Ireland's May 31 vote represents the only popular test for the 25-nation treaty. The Associated Press

Referendum posters line a riverside street in Dublin Sunday. The Irish government is asking voters to approve the European Union's fiscal treaty in a May 31 vote. The poster in the upper right advises "Ta," which is Gaelic for "yes." The Associated Press

A man walking down a street in Dublin on Sunday passes rival referendum posters advising "yes" and "no" votes. Ireland's May 31 vote represents the only popular test of opinion for the European Union's deficit-fighting agreement. Ireland cannot ratify the treaty without majority "yes" support. The Associated Press

Ireland, once staunchly pro-EU but increasingly euroskeptical, is the only member of the bloc putting the agreement to a national vote.

Analysts of the three-year-old eurozone crisis say an Irish rejection of the treaty, combined with Francois Hollande’s victory as France’s president and a hard-left turn in Greece’s parliamentary elections, could force the continent to shift in favor of less cutting and greater investment in growth.

And they agree that, even if the fiscal treaty is ratified by the minimum 12 nations required, it is likely to be an economic dead letter before it comes into force next year. Its key goal — to bind nations into tighter debt and deficit limits under the threat of EU fines — seems downright perverse in the face of widening recession.

“This is the weakest treaty that the EU has ever come up with. It’s rapidly been overtaken by events and looks increasingly meaningless,” said Simon Tilford, chief economist at the Centre for European Reform think tank in London.

Here are the key issues driving the debate over the future of Europe’s fiscal treaty.

THE INCOMPLETE EURO

Economists broadly agree that the EU powers that be, chiefly in Germany, remain in public denial about the real underlying reasons for the eurozone crisis: the faulty, half-baked design of the euro common currency, with no central coordination of debt funding.

Its repair, they say, will require German Chancellor Angela Merkel and her uneasy electorate to accept the need for national debts to become European property.

University College Dublin economist Colm McCarthy, one of Ireland’s foremost fiscal troubleshooters, described the treaty as “essentially an evasion, designed to provide political cover, particularly in Germany, for measures which will have to be contemplated if the crisis persists.”

He said its drafters seek to defend a fictional pretense “that Europe’s problems derive entirely from budgetary excess.”

McCarthy argued that, had the fiscal treaty been law since the euro’s launch in 1999, its supposedly tough spending rules would have made no difference in preventing the current banking and debt-financing problems, with the single possible exception of Greece because of its track record of fraudulent government accounting. Nor would the treaty forestall further debt crises, he said.

Joerg Kraemer, chief economist for Commerzbank in Frankfurt, said the fiscal treaty was “not very strict.”

He noted that it permits a deficit-violating nation to justify its spending by citing “negative circumstances that you can’t control. This could be anything. There are a lot of loopholes, and it’s a bad sign that France does not even accept such a watered-down agreement.”

THE RISE OF HOLLANDE

France’s electoral embrace of Hollande deals a hammer blow to the central guiding force for austerity demands: the right-wing alliance between Merkel and ousted French leader Nicolas Sarkozy, known by the portmanteau “Merkozy.”

Hollande campaigned on the need for EU leaders to forge a new growth-focused agreement that reduces the dead weight of debt on the most struggling eurozone economies. He says this will require the launch of eurobonds issued by the European Central Bank for funding the debt-refinancing needs of the entire 17-nation eurozone.

That idea is understandably detested by Merkel and many Germans, because it would transform other EU countries’ separate debt-financing efforts into a European, and principally German, responsibility.

But the many critics of the eurozone system say this is exactly what the common currency needed from its infancy to combat the current funding crisis, which has already forced Greece, Ireland and Portugal to take EU-International Monetary Fund bailouts and is pushing eurozone heavyweights Spain and Italy down the same road.

They argue that other EU nations offered Germany its promise of greater spending rectitude, as embodied by the fiscal treaty, in expectation this would give Merkel new room to maneuver in her homeland to expose Germany to more of the continent’s debt liabilities.

“The French even under Sarkozy had great reservations about Merkel’s focus on austerity, but they went along with it in the hope they could extract concessions in return. With Sarkozy gone, Germany will become increasingly isolated,” Tilford said. “Germany will eventually weaken its position.”

WILL MERKEL BUDGE?

There’s no public sign of that. Analysts forecast this means the crisis will have to spread, and deepen in Spain and Italy, before policy shifts.

They are confident it will, noting that Spain is still just starting to tackle the toxic property-based debts in its banking system, announcing this month it will nationalize the largest real-estate lender, Bankia. Spain, just like Ireland, spent a decade bingeing on the cheap credit that euro membership underpinned to inflate its housing market.

On Thursday, Merkel told Germany’s lower house of parliament, the Bundestag, she would support growth only through “structural reform,” jargon for boosting a nation’s efficiency and competitiveness. Economists tend to emphasize that such long-term reforms, while laudable, offer little immediate impact on deficit reduction as the crisis requires.

“Growth through debt would throw us back to the beginning of the crisis, and that’s why we haven’t done it and won’t do it,” she said, dismissing eurobonds as a “supposed miracle cure.”

But borrowing more doesn’t necessarily mean more debt as Merkel asserts, any more than spending less ensures less debt. It’s all about encouraging or deterring growth, which in turn boosts or lowers tax collections.

IRELAND’S CONFUSION

Tilford said he expects Germany eventually to support a loosening of the fiscal treaty’s proposed rules on maximum deficits, so that countries with healthy credit ratings and an ability to borrow freely would have EU permission to pump extra money into job-creating, tax-generating projects as Hollande and others want.

He also foresees German acceptance of eurobonds and a more aggressive role for the European Central Bank in taking direct responsibility for banks’ toxic debts.

All these issues will be debated at the next European Union summit May 23, Hollande’s first. It’s not known who will represent Greece, where most voters now back anti-austerity parties and no new governing coalition has emerged, making another early election likely.

Europe’s political turmoil is complicating the Irish government’s campaign this month to secure a majority “yes” for the treaty, which it has branded “The Stability Treaty.” Prime Minister Enda Kenny emphasizes that Ireland must accept it to ensure future access to EU bailout loans.

But many on the left and right alike argue the referendum should be delayed until the autumn, to see whether other countries continue to ratify the treaty through their parliaments or a new, growth-emphasizing treaty emerges in coming months of EU summitry.

“With (Hollande’s) election, an enormous argument about the right balance between fiscal responsibility and the need for growth is just beginning,” said Fintan O’Toole, an influential Irish author and commentator. “Carrying on with a referendum as if none of this was happening is a classic case of fighting the last war.”

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